New York Radiant
by Heir of the void
Summary: A boy, snatched form our earth and granted powers beyond easy comprehension. A war, between flesh-eating monsters and the people who hunt them. A new player has be introduced, and the game threatens to change in a big way. That is, if I can get my act together. Contains elements from the Stormlight Archives, but isn't a true crossover and no knowledge of SA is required. SI, OCs.
1. Chapter 1

**I did some soul searching, and decided this wasn't really a crossover, per se. So I moved it here, to the main section. No Stormlight Archive knowledge is required to enjoy this story. Don't forget to review!**

**[x]**

I never saw the bus that killed me. I suppose that shouldn't really come as a surprise, most people don't see whatever it is that gets them in the end. In any case, as I felt my body impact on the sidewalk, I could literally feel myself dying, my consciousness slipping out of my reach.

And with that, I died. It was a bit like falling asleep, actually, with a sort of distant terror added in that I was too busy dying to notice.

Then I felt myself floating. I opened my eyes, and immediately screwed them shut again against the brightness. It was overwhelming.

"In my defense, by brother was a douchebag." I said.

**If it were time for your judgement**. A Voice said. **It would be you who would be weighed, not those around you**. **But that is not now.**

"Come again?" I said, not really thinking about how I could talk.

**You were not supposed to die there.** The Voice continued. **You have a choice. I could return you to your life, just as you were, or I could make you a hero.**

"What do you mean, make me a hero?" I asked. That sounded... intriguing.

**Exactly what it sounds like. You will be granted power, and sent to right a great wrong. There will be great danger, and if you fall, I cannot save you again. But you may earn great glory**.

"Sign me up." I said.

Because really, what choice was there? I could be a boring, mediocre person, or I could be a hero. My life sucked enough as it was, but as a hero, those problems might have some meaning.

**Are you sure?** The Voice asked. **Once you set off down this path, there is not turning back.**

"I'm sure." I said.

**Very well. It is done. Now, a hero must have power. What is your... Ah, I see. The Stormlight Archives. And excellent choice. You will begin immediately.**

"What, what about the Stormlight Archives?" I said.

**Oh, and one last thing. The world you will be saving? It isn't exactly Earth, or at least not as you know it.**

"I-"

Everything went black. And yes, even with my eyes close, I could tell.

[x]

Time passed. I had no standard by which to measure how much.

[x]

I was floating in darkness. Eventually, it occurred to me to open my eyes. A point of light floated in front of me. I tilted my head.

"Hello?" The point of light said.

"Hello." I responded.

"Oh, good. You're awake." The light said. "I'm Sorilda. Pleased to meet you."

"Ok. I said." What's going on? I mean, do you know?"

"We're in transit." Sorilda said. "Between two worlds."

"That's... Weird." I said. "But given the way my day's been going, not entry unexpected."

"What do you mean?" Sorilda asked, bouncing slightly in midair.

"Well, first I get hit by a bus, and now I find out that I'm being sent... Somewhere, and I might never see my friends and family again."

"Oh..." Sorilda said, drifting slightly to the side. "Well, you have me now, right?"

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Well, I'm your Sovereignspren" Sorilda said.

"Wait." I said. "Does this make me a Radiant? Or a Surgebinder, anyways?"

"It makes you a Surgebinder." Sorilda said. "There is more to being a Radiant than simply bonding a Spren, though if you've managed to make a Nahel Bond, you probably don't have far to go."

"That might be a problem." I said.

"What do you mean?" Sorilda asked.

"I'm not exactly the most Integrity-full of people."

"Is that even a word?" Sorilda said. I got the distinct impression she was muttering. "In any case, you better shape up fast. I've got everything riding on you."

At that moment, I felt a sudden sensation of slowing down. I looked towards my feet, and spotted a light rushing towards me. Instants later, I impacted. Light filled my vision.

As I blinked to clear my eyes, I looked around. I was standing on concrete, with brick buildings rising up on either side of me. There was a dumpster in front of me, and as I looked around, a car drove past the street in front of me.

I was in a dark alley. And it was oddly cold. I looked down at myself.

I was naked.

Typical. Just the way my day was going.

A point of light appeared in the air next to me, and Sorilda appeared in the air next to me. She appeared like a flame rising from an invisible candle. He from was that of a tiny young woman made of orange light, flickering like she was made out of fire. The second she appeared, she recoiled, covering her eyes in what appeared to be exaggerated horror.

"No one needs to see that!" Sorilda said in a strange stage voice. "Here, wear this."

A strange warmth enveloped me, and I felt a strange sense of constriction, and a light shined around me. I looked around, and I felt something settle over my head. My vision blacked out for a second, and then I was looking at the world as through a plate of glass.

I looked down at myself. I was covered in intricate plate armor, with no gaps, only smaller plates that interlocked perfectly. It took a step forward, and nearly tripped. Strength pulsed through my limbs, and I felt incredible.

"Is this Shardplate?" I asked, looking down at my arms.

"Yup." Sorilda said, her voice echoing in my head, though her from in front of me hadn't vanished.

"Awesome." I said. "I think."

"Oh." Sorilda said. "You might want this, too."

I felt a sudden surge of energy through my body, above and beyond that granted by my Shardplate. It felt like a storm injected into my blood.

Stormlight.

"How are you doing this?" I asked, bewildered. "Spren can't grant their Radiants Stormlight."

Sorilda shrugged. "I don't know. Why do you think I would?"

I shook my head, my Shardplate not restricting my movement in the slightest.

"I forgot how today was going." I said. "In any case-"

A scream split the sounds of the city. It was a primal sound of fear, absolute terror. And it was close.

"What was that?" I muttered.

"I think that's obvious." Sorilda said, her from flickering. "The question is, what are you going to do about it?"

"What am I going to do about it?" I said. "Why me?"

"You're a Knight Radiant." Sorilda said. "You know your ideals."

"Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination." I muttered. "And I will protect those who cannot protect themselves."

Sorilda smiled.

I took off running deeper into the alley, towards the source of the screams. My legs moved like pistons, Stormlight and Shardplate-granted strength surging through them. I reached the end of the alley in a heartbeat, nearly running into the wall.

Pivoting at the last second, I turned and ran down into the alley, heartbeats thundering in my chest, though I didn't feel the slightest bit tired.

I turned again, and I came into an open space between buildings. Three figures stood there, with two more prone on the ground. As I looked closer, it appeared the figures on the ground were lying in pools of dark fluid.

The Alley space was poorly lit by moonlight, but I could make out the vicious expressions on the face of one of the standing men as he turned toward me.

I could also see his eyes.

They were horrifying.

The sclera of the eye was completely black, and the pupil and iris were blood red, seeming to glow with their own inner light. The second man, and one woman, standing over the body also turned towards me, displaying their own identical, horrifying eyes.

The woman's tongue slid out of her mouth and wet her lips.

"What have we here..." She muttered. "A cosplayer, barging in on our meal. How rude."

I took a step back, the Stormlight in my blood warring with the fear in my mind.

"You can do this." Sorilda said. "You can fight them. Hold out your hand."

I did so, holding my hand out to the side, trying to hold back the fear in my mind. A cloud of mist appeared over my hand, and a massive sword, a monstrosity with a blade more than five feet long, appeared, and fell into my hand.

It felt perfect. It was _my_ Shardblade, made perfect for me. I swung it in front of me experimentally. It felt like it weighed little more than a feather. It looked like flowing flames frozen into metal, intricate patterns smoothing out into a blade on one edge and into a series of ridges on the other.

"You think a little knife scares us?" The woman said, gesturing to one of the men standing next to her. "Get him."

One of the men rushed towards me with superhuman speed. The world seemed to slow down as the man approached, and I swung my Shardblade towards him.

He ran right into it. The edge of the blade misted as it cut through him, and I felt a slight tug on the handle.

The man didn't stop.

What the hell? Shardblades were supposed to be a one-hit kill. As I recovered from my swing, the man seemed to flinch, then he kept coming.

The man slammed into me, knocking me backwards with far more than human strength. I was wearing Shardplate; this man shouldn't have been able to knock be back so easily.

As I impacted the ground, I felt tiny clouds of Stormlight puff out of the shoulders of my armor. The man was on top of me, sitting on my chest. But as he raised a fist to slam into me, I sat up, Stormlight driving me to act, easily dislodging him with my Shardplate and Stormlight enhanced strength.

As he slid off my body, I raised my Shardblade and swung again, aiming for the neck of the recovering and surprised man.

This time, as the blade swung through the man's neck, tendrils of smoke rose from his eyes and he slumped, eyes burned out by my Shardblade.

I looked back at the woman as I sprang to my feet. Her hideous eyes widened, and red tentacles burst from her back.

What the hell?

As the woman's blood red tentacles shot towards me, I raised my Shardblade to what I assumed was a guard position. The Stormlight flowing through my body screamed for me to attack, but I held my ground.

The first tentacle came at me from the side, trying to wrap around me. I brought my Shardblade down in a chop and, clumsy though the attack was, I moved with the speed of Stormlight. The Shardblade passed through the tentacle. The length of the tentacle below where I hit turned grey and seemed to shrivel.

I heard something and, a second later, another tentacle slammed into my back. I could distinctly feel the impact on my Shardplate, and as I stumbled back, Sorilda appeared before me, seeming to burn into existence in front of my face.

"Use your lashings!" She said.

"How do I do that?" I muttered, whirling around and chopping at the tentacle with my Shardblade.

"Command the Stormlight, and it will obey." Sorilda said.

"Great." I muttered, dashing over to the wall nearest me. I stabbed my Shardblade into the wall and began to cut. Moments later, I had a massive chunk of concrete taller than I was cut out of the wall, its bottom shaped to cause it to slide out onto the ground.

As the chunk of concrete fell, I jumped behind it to dodge another tentacle strike, then rested my gauntleted hand on it.

"Basic lashing." I muttered, willing the Stormlight out of my body and into the rock. "Two gravities."

I set the lashing straight outward, toward the female with the tentacles. The chunk of rock shot out toward the woman, who drew back her tentacles to try to stop if from slamming into her, to no avail.

As the chunk of concrete 'fell' into the woman and kept moving, I spun around, raising my Shardblade towards the last man standing. He growled, his freaky eyes narrowing, and charged me, tentacles bursting from his back.

He covered the distance between us insanely quickly, four tentacles coming at me at once. I swum my Shardblade in a circle, slaying the tips of the tentacles, but inertia kept them coming at me.

The dead tips of the tentacles sort of splatted as they impacted my Shardplate, but then the living section of the tentacles connected, and they hit hard. I could feel my Shardplate crack under the assault as the tentacles began to slide around my body.

What was going on here? What were these people? And why had they attacked me? What was I going to do?

Focusing all my strength, I surged forward, sliding out of the grip of the tentacles for a second and freeing my sword hand. I swung, striking one of the tentacles right where it came out from behind the man's shoulder.

As the tentacle's bloody color faded, the man slammed into me with insane force, pushing me back.

I managed to stay on my feet as the man recovered from his slam, and I swung my Shardblade in a one-handed swing towards the man's neck. Clearly not too smart, he raised a hand to block the blade.

The Shardblade passed clean through his hand, though I felt a bit more resistance than usual as I pulled it through. The blade continued through the air for a moment, then it took the man in the base of the head.

I felt a lot more resistance this time as I pulled the Shardblade through my attacker's skull. He stumbled backwards, thin tendrils of smoke rising from his eyes.

Then the man fell to the ground, tentacles going slack. I looked around, spotting the two bodies on the group over near where I had found my attackers.

Slowly, I walked over to them, not vanishing my Shardblade. I knelt down beside one of the bodies.

It was a woman, lying in a pool of her own blood, and she was very dead. Bites had been taken out of her body, and her neck appeared to be broken.

I nearly threw up. Had Stormlight not still been surging through my body, I probably would have. As it was, I felt sick. What were those people doing? Were they _eating_ this body? What was going on?

"Stop right there!" A clear male voice said. "Drop the sword, take off your helmet, and get down on your knees!"

I turned around slowly, being careful not to make any sudden moves. I bent over and laid my Shardblade on the ground, then reached up to remove my helmet. Before my fingers touched it, it vanished. I could suddenly feel the cold night air on my skin, which I realized was slick with sweat.

I put my hands behind my head and knelt down, then took a long look at the man in front of me.

He was an older man, slightly balding, and wearing an immaculate suit. He was pointing a pistol at me with his left hand, and carried a sword in his right. He wore a badge I recognized as the star in a circle of the U.S. Marshals on his chest.

"Sir... what's going on here?" I said slowly, still trying to process what was going on. "I was just-"

"That's what I aim to find out." The man said. "Now, I have one question for you. Are you Ghoul or Human?"

"What the... Of course I'm human!" I said, confused. "What the hell is a Ghoul?"

"Well, you'd say you're human, I suppose." The man said. "But you have impressive control over your Kakugan if you can turn your eyes back to normal after using your Kagune."

I shook my head. I hoped that I had used enough Stormlight in the fight that I wasn't glowing. "What the hell is a Kakugan, or a Kagune?" I said.

"Here's what we're going to do." The man said, gesturing with his sword. "I have backup that's about to get here. You're going to stay right where you are until they do, and then I'm taking you black to the Branch Office."

"Yes, officer." I said slowly.

Cooperating with the authority was probably for the best, at least for now. I'd never been the sort of person to distrust authority, and I didn't have enough information to make a judgment

Or I suppose that's what I was thinking. In the moment, I wasn't able to do much in the way of rational thought. Maybe I just didn't want to fight anymore.

"I'm a Marshal, not an officer." The man said.

"What have I done wrong?" I said. "I thought the Marshals only went after fugitives from justice and enforced court orders."

The man stared back at me with a blank look on his face. "Sure, we do some of that on the side." He said. "But everyone knows what our primary job is."

"And what is that?" I said.

"Protecting the populace from Ghouls." The man said, still staring at me with an incredulous look on his face. "How do you not know that?"

"What's a Ghoul?" I asked.

"How can you not know what a Ghoul is?" The man said.

As I was trying to formulate a response, two more men in suits with handguns out ran down the alley into the space where the Marshal and I were standing.

"Sir, the heavy response team is here... What happened here, sir?" One of the men said, looking around the space.

"Three ghouls, two victims, and one unknown." The Marshal responded sharply. "The unknown eliminated the ghouls, but I'm taking him back to base for questioning."

He turned to face me. "You're coming with us." He said. "Right this way."

"You lead the way, sir." I said.

One of the men in suits led me down the alleyway, with another of them behind me, and the Marshal taking up the rear. I could feel their guns pointed at me.

When we got to the street, a large white truck like the sort you might hire when moving house sat next to mouth of the alleyway, surrounded by men in full riot gear. The suited man leading me pointed to the open back of the truck, and I climbed in and sat down on a rack.

As the back of the truck closed, cutting off the light from outside, I looked down at my hands.

What was going on?

I had killed people. That much was for sure. They were trying to kill me at the time, but I had still ended their lives.

But were they even human? Two of them had grown tentacles, and their eyes were... haunting.

Oh, and they were apparently eating people. There was that.

But what was going on? Why was I a Knight Radiant, and how had I gotten here? Where was here, anyway?

I paused, mentally pushing back on my panic. I needed to start with what I knew.

The Knights Radiant were an apparently fictional group of warriors of exceptional character from a book I had read, _The Way of Kings_, that bonded with Spren like Sorilda to grant the Spren sentience and gain superhuman powers. There Spren could manifest into the world as Shardblades and Shardplate, and they could use Stormlight to control forces called Surges to create magical effects, like controlling gravity.

Now onto what was wrong. For one thing, I wasn't of exceptional character. I was just... average. So why was I a Radiant?

Second, where had my Stormlight come from? Radiants needed to inhale Stormlight from gemstones infused with it during Highstorms to improve their battle abilities and use Surgebinding. I had done neither. So what was the deal with that?

And lastly, these Ghouls. From what the Marshal had said, I suppose that's what they were. Tentacled monsters that ate people. Disgusting.

I clenched one of my armored hands into a fist. Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination. That was the ideal I was bound to now, if I didn't want to kill Sorilda. And I think I knew what that meant.

Speak of the devil and she shall appear. Sorilda appeared in the air next to me, burning into existence.

"I've been taking a look around, and these guys are pretty serious." She said. "They're well-armed, and there weapons are pretty wired, too. They're dead."

"What do you mean?" I asked, glancing at Sorilda.

"I don't know." She said. "But that's the feeling I get from them. So, have you decided what you're going to do?"

"I don't know." I said. "I think I need to find out more about what's going on before I can make a decision."

As I spoke, I could feel the truck slow to a stop, then move slowly forward for a short distance, then stop again.

A few seconds later, the back of the truck opened, and the face of the older Marshal I had seen appeared.

"Come on, kid." He said. "You can come out now. We've got twenty guards with Q Bullets out here, and three snipers, so don't try anything. We're just going to take a little blood, and find out if you're a Ghoul."

I raised my hands over my head and walked toward the edge of the truck. The Marshal took a step back as I approached the edge and hopped down.

The back of the truck was surrounded by men in combat gear, all of them pointing assault rifles at me.

"Let's play nice, boys." The Marshal said. "Now, if you would follow me?"

The Marshal turned and started walking toward a building. I looked around. The building was surrounded by a wall at least twenty feet tall and topped with razor wire. Guard towers rose at regular intervals, and a squat concrete building rested in the center.

As I walked toward the building, which was built like a bunker, I wondered why the Marshals needed such a fortified base.

We walked into a door at the base of the building. Two of the men with assault rifles entered behind me. The Marshal sheathed his sword and picked up a small box from a shelf and removed an oblong object.

"If you could remove your glove?" He said.

I nodded, and willed my glove not to be.

Much to my surprise, it vanished. Sorilda appeared in the corner of my eye and smiled.

"Alright." The marshal said. "This might sting a bit."

He pushed the oblong object against my finger, and I felt a prickling sensation. It remained in contact for several seconds, then beeped.

The Marshal returned the oblong object to the box, then packaged the whole thing up in a tube, with rounded ends. "I'll just send this off to the lab." He said. "In the meantime, I'm taking you down to Holding Area One. Would you like something to eat?"

I thought back to the chewed-on corpse of the woman in that alley. "I don't think I'm hungry." I said.

"I'd advise you to eat." The Marshal said, as he opened a door to a staircase. "It would make us more inclined to trust you. Ghouls can't eat human food, after all."

"Oh." I said, as we began to descend. "Well, what do you have?"

"The food here is pretty good." The Marshal said. "I think we like to rub in the fact that we can enjoy it and they can't."

I chuckled. It felt good to do that. I had seen too much shit today.

We descended several flights of stairs, eventually coming to a heavy door. The agent pressed his palm against a scanner and entered a passcode. The door beeped, and he opened it.

"So." I said, stepping into the door. "What is a Ghoul?"

"You're really going to play not knowing?" The Marshal said.

I looked around the room I was in. It looked a bit like a hospital room crossed with an apartment, with a bed surrounded my complex looking machinery, and a door leading to what I assumed was a bathroom. There were a pair of prominent cameras hanging from the ceiling, and a few chairs around a table opposite the bed.

The Marshal sat down at the table and reached into his pocket and removed a small device. He pressed a button and a screen lowered from the ceiling near the chairs. A projector activated, lighting up the screen.

"I suppose I can show you the orientation video while we wait for the bloodwork to come back." The Marshal said. "By the way, I'm Marshal Phil Chandler. Pleasure to meet you. You know, probably."

A counter surrounded by a disappearing circle appeared on the center of the screen in grayscale, like you see at old-timey movies. It vanished, and was replaced by grayscale footage of smiling crowds.

"Ghouls." A stereotypical narrator voice said, echoing from hidden speakers. "The enemies of humanity. They lurk among us. Anyone, at any time, could be a Ghoul."

Abruptly, the crowds vanished, to be replaced with a full-color HD shot of dismembered bodies and blood. I recoiled in horror at the image.

"And this is their handiwork." The narrator said. "This is what Ghouls are, and this is what we of the United States Federal Marshals seek to prevent."

The shot of dismembered bodies switched to an image of the Vitruvian Man, da Vinci's image of a man standing in a square and a circle.

"You may think that this is a human male." The narrator said. "But you would be wrong. This is an Adult Ghoul Male, fully capable of killing and feeding on Humans. Let's not the primary differences."

A line appeared pointing to the Ghoul's stomach. "Due to unique structures present in the digestive tract of a Ghoul, as well as certain enzymes produced by all ghouls, they are unable to metabolize anything but Human flesh. Anything else, even the chemically similar pork or veal, will not satisfy their hunger, and indeed will trigger violent nausea and, if digested, create serious health complications, potentially leading to death."

Another line appeared, pointing at the Ghoul's mouth. "The tongue structures of a Ghoul differ from those of a Human, causing most substances edible to humans to taste disgusting to a Ghoul. Combined with their inability to digest food, the reactions of a suspect eating can be used to reveal if they are a Ghoul. Ghouls might eat human food, but must vomit it up soon after."

That was... Perfectly disgusting. As I kept watching, more lines appeared, pointing at the Ghoul's arms and legs.

"Ghouls have a musculature radically different from that of humans. Their muscular structure grants then sufficient strength to disembowel a human with their bare hands, and to send a human being 'ragdolling' with a moderate level of exertion. In addition, their skin is extremely resilient, with a hardness value exceeding thirty when measured by a Sclerometer. Despite this, their skin remains perfectly flexible and is indistinguishable from that of a human to casual inspection."

Thirty... was that a lot? And how did they manage to still move around with skin that hard?

A cartoonish image of a bullet appeared at the edge of the screen, moved rather slowly toward the Ghoul's head, bounced off, and fell of the bottom of the screen.

"The hardened skin of a Ghoul, combines with their extremely reinforced musculature system, grants Ghouls considerable resistance to conventional firearms, though high-caliber, high velocity rounds, partially Armor Piercing ammunition, will have some effect. Given that blood must still circulate through a Ghoul's body, gross damage to the surface of the body can cause death by blood loss, though given the considerable regenerative ability of a Ghoul, this method is inefficient."

Well, a Shardblade seemed to kill them dead enough. I wondered how the people here managed to deal with Ghouls if guns were less than effective.

"Then how, you might ask, are you expected to face Ghouls?" The narrator said.

He read my mind.

"The answer lies in the same thing that grants Ghouls there considerable physical ability; Red Child cells. So named because they resemble tiny, blood red embryos, Red Child, or Rc Cells, grant Ghouls their core advantage over Humans."

An image of a sword appeared on the screen. "However, Rc Cells can be fashioned into Quinque Steel, an extremely resilient material capable of penetrating the skin of a Ghoul. So named for the five molecular bonds present in its crystalline structure, Quinque steel also possess a unique electromagnetic field that impedes the action of Rc Cells that protects Ghouls from kinetic impacts, allowing a normal Human to inflight tissue damage while in combat with a Ghoul."

That was creepy. Fashioning stuff you took from the corpses of your enemies into the weapons you used to fight them.

"While some high-level agents carry melee weapons fashioned from high-grade Quinque steel for close quarters combat with Ghouls, this should be considered a last resort, but it is possible. Preferred tactics for Ghoul Elimination are long-ranged precision gunfire using Quinque bullets, preferable in an isolated area to avoid disturbing the peace."

The orientation video continued into the scientific theories for why Ghouls were the way they were, but it was all talking around the issue that, despite their ability to use Rc Cells to make Quinque Steel, Marshal scientists had no answers to many of the questions surrounding Ghouls.

What a comforting thought.

As the projector died and the screen scrolled back up into the ceiling. Marshal Chandler cleared his throat.

"So, that is what were are facing." He said, looking down at the sword on his hip. "My sword is a high-grade Quinque, and I have killed dozens of ghouls with it."

He gave me a serious look. "But that isn't enough. We're outnumbered and outmatched. There are hundreds of full Marshals in the country, and tens of thousands of Deputies, Field Agents, and others, but only a fraction of us are front-line personnel. And we estimate that there are between three hundred thousand and half a million Ghouls living within the borders of the United States."

"That's... A lot." I said.

"Look. You're bloodwork hasn't come back yet, but I'd be shocked if you're a Ghoul. I have a sense for these things, and I'm rarely wrong." Marshal Chandler said gravely, looking me in the eye. "We're fighting a war, son."

I nodded.

"And we're losing."

"What?" I said. "But, I mean, how is that possible? Wouldn't civilization collapse?"

"I said we're losing, not that we lost." Marshal Chandler said. "He's the deal. Ghouls have a much lower birth rate than Humans. That's a fact. But since the end of the Baby Boom, human birth rates have been declining due to cultural and social factors."

"Okay..." I said.

"But the Ghouls have kept their birth rates high. Combined with the fact that we're still digging the out the Ghouls who integrated themselves into our society during WWII, there are more Ghouls per humans in this country than there have been at just about any time in history. Probably. Ghoul history is spotty at best."

I took a deep breath. "What are the numbers?"

"What do you mean?" Marshal Chandler said.

"How many people get eaten each year?" I asked.

"We don't know." Chandler said. "But we do know that Ghouls need to feed every six weeks or so, but not every one of those feedings is going to be a murder. There is a whole black market for corpses, and it's sort of an open secret that we don't do anything about it. But taking all that into account, we estimate that there are around two point five Ghoul-related murders every year in this nation alone."

My jaw dropped. "That many?"

"Our annual losses to Ghouls are more than all our WWII combat deaths." Chandler said. "We suppress the numbers, but everyone has a cousin or an uncle that got eaten by a Ghoul, and too many have lost mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters."

I realized that he was gripping the armrest of the chair, his knuckles going white. He was serious about this. And I should be too. Two and a half million. That was unbelievable. I suppose it was true. A million was a statistic. I was having trouble processing the numbers.

"What can I do?" I asked.

Life before Death.

"You can fight, I know that." Chandler said. "Judging by the way you moved, you aren't trained, but you just took down three Ghouls at once. Do you have any idea how rare that is?"

"No." I said. "Though I assume that it's fairly uncommon."

"Very." Chandler said. "The point is, with training, I think you could be a match for some of the worst Ghouls out there. And we need that sort of mobile strike power. Often, we get shots at high-value targets, but they slip away before we can assemble the sort of strike force we would need to take them down. But with that sword, I think you could great things."

The door of the containment room beeped, and a man in a black lab coat walked in, holding a piece of paper. "The test results are in. He has an Rc Factor of 465. A little on the high side, but well within the Human norm, and far below the minimum threshold for a Ghoul."

Chandler turned to glance at me. "See, what did I tell you? You're human. Now, I'd like to make you a formal offer to join the Marshals as a deputy."

I took a deep breath. Sorilda appeared, hovering just above Chandler's shoulder. I glanced at her. I had to consider what was right by the Immortal Words of the Radiants, and what was right would be to help stem the tide of blood that was drowning this world.

Besides, it wasn't like I had anywhere else to go.

"I accept." I said. "I would be delighted to join your quest."

"Very well." Chandler said. "I had hoped for nothing less. But before we do anything else, you're going to have to explain to me everything you know about your power, because it's clearly not a Kagune."

"Well." I began. "I'm what you might call a probationary member of an order called the Knights Radiant, a group of Knights bonded to ethereal creatures called Spren to gain a power called Surgebinding. They er, we, can also manifest blades called Shardblades, which you saw me use back in the alley."

"I did." Chandler said. "Judging by the name, I assume it's more than just a sword?"

"A Shardblade can cut through anything that isn't alive with virtually no resistance, and kill anything living thing it cuts with as much difficulty." I said "Cut a limb and its dead. Swing a Shardblade through the spine or a major organ cluster and the target is dead."

"And what about that armor you're wearing?"

It's Shardplate." I said, rapping a knuckle on my breastplate. "Shardplate can stop a Shardblade, as well as just about anything else, more effectively than most other materials of a similar thickness, and also grants its wearer a massive boost to strength, stamina, and speed."

"Amazing." Chandler said. "This could be just the break we were looking for. Increased speed and strength... Enough to match a Ghoul... and a Weapon that surpasses a Quinque. Son, it is with unspeakable pride that I deputize you as a Deputy-Private Second Class of the United States Marshals. Now, tell me about this Surgebinding. I saw you throw a chunk of concrete at that Ghoul. What is it, some form of telekinesis?"

"Not exactly." I said. "I manipulated gravity."

"You're shitting me." Chandler said flatly.

"No." I said. "I changed gravity for that block of concrete so 'down' for it was towards that Ghoul. Sir Isaac Newton did the rest."

"Wow." He said. "Could you just have changed gravity the ghouls so down for them was up into space?"

Sorilda shook her head. "No." She stage-whispered. "You can't Lash an unwilling target like that."

"No." I said. "Something has to be dead or inert for me to Lash it, to change gravity for it."

"I see." Chandler said, raising his hand to his chin. "Can you fly?"

"With practice." I said.

"How fast?" Chandler said, leaning forward in his chair. "I mean, flying is pretty awesome, so..."

"Well," I said, "With one Lashing, I could reach terminal velocity. That's around two hundred miles an hour or so. With multiple Lashings, I could get a lot faster, but then my reaction speed starts to become a concern. Though I suppose that Stormlight speeds that up and cushions the impacts, so... Not as fast as a Jet, but pretty fast."

"This could be huge." Chandler said. He looked like a little boy on Christmas morning. "I'll show you to one of the guest rooms. You get a good night's sleep; your training starts in the morning. Until then, stay shiny, you magnificent bastard."

[x]

I lay in the bed that was provided for me by the Marshals. I had vanished my Shardplate and changed into the provided standard-issue pajamas, then taken a shower and gone to bed. I hadn't seen Sorilda since I joined the Marshals.

And I couldn't sleep.

I had killed today. Sure, they were Ghouls, but I had still ended sentient lives.

But I was protecting those who couldn't protect themselves. I had to hold onto that. Those Ghouls were murders who needed to be put down, and that's what I had done.

However, I had just signed on to the largest Ghoul-hunting outfit in North America. Odds were excellent that, assuming I wasn't killed in action, I would kill again. Honestly, I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

More importantly, I was stranded in a strange world with over ten million deadly predators who could only subsist off of human flesh. I had been sent here by dying, so there was no reason to believe that there would be a way home

And I would never see my family again. Or my friends, or even the various people I didn't partially like. I would never see any of them again.

I sighed. There was nothing that I could do, but I just couldn't let go of the issue.

Slowly, I slipped off into a fitful sleep.

[x]

I was awakened by a bucket of ice water to the face.

"MORNING, MAGGOT!" A rough voice shouted. "I WANT YOU UP AND DRESSED IN SIXTY SECONDS. GO GO GO! THIS COULD BE A GHOUL ATTACK!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Please review.**

…**please?**

**[x]**

Now, it should be pointed out that I am something of a heavy sleeper, and that I have never been awakened by a bucket of water to the face before. As a result, I was somewhat slow to react when I was awakened by a bucket of water to the face and a fair bit of shouting.

"Wha-" I managed, sitting up bolt upright in the exact way that people in bunk beds shouldn't.

"GET UP, MAGGOT!" A tall, burly man standing next to my bed and dressed in a uniform tracksuit shouted. "ITS TIME TO START YOUR TRAINING!"

A drill sergeant. Wonderful. I knew it was best to just shut up and do as I was told, so I immediately sprang out of bed, shivering.

And fell flat on my face. Great.

"YOU THINK YOU CAN FACE A GHOUL WITH REFLEXES LIKE THAT!" The (presumed) drill sergeant said. "PATHETIC. DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY!"

I struggled to untangle myself from the knot I had tied myself in, striving to get into a pushup position before something stupid happened. I had just managed to begin my assigned exercises when the sarge took the opportunity to voice his opinion on me.

"YOU MAY THINK YOU'RE SOMETHING SPECIAL JUST BECAUSE YOU HAVE SOME FANCY-ASS SWORD AND MARSHAL CHANDLER THINKS YOU'RE HOT SHIT." He shouted, looking down at me. "BUT I DON'T, AND NEITHER SHOULD YOU. AND IF YOU DO WHAT TO AMOUNT TO SOMETHING, YOU _WILL_ SHUT UP AND DO EVERYTHING I TELL YOU. OR SO HELP ME, I WILL BREAK YOU!"

"Yes sergeant!" I shouted, finishing my last push up.

It was... Not particularly easy, but not as bad as I had been expecting. I had never been good at pushups, a phrase which here means that I could barely do ten, but I had managed to bang out twenty fairly easily.

"DEAR GOD ABOVE!" The sergeant said. "YOU ACTUALLY KNOW HOW TO ADDRESS A NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICER OF THE MARSHALS. I BET YOU THINK THAT MAKES YOU A SMARTY-PANTS, DOESN'T IT!"

"No sergeant!" I shouted, standing back up and facing him.

"EXCELLENT." The sergeant said. "I AM A SERGEANT FERAL, BUT YOU WILL CONTINUE TO ADDRESS ME BY RANK. IS THAT CLEAR?"

"Yes Sergeant!" I shouted.

"NOW, WE WILL EXIT THIS BUILDING. I WILL SET A PACE, AND YOU WILL FOLLOW. YOU WILL NOT FALL BEHIND."

The sergeant turned around and immediately started jogging out the door. I followed. He set a difficult pace, at least for me. I suspected it was the very least he was capable of. We jogged down a long hallway, around a corner, down some stairs, and past a security checkpoint with two guards on duty.

Then were out in the morning air. Not the morning sun, as the Sun hadn't risen yet, and he grounds of the Marshal base were still lit by bright klieg lights. The Sergeant pick up the pace as we exited the building and turned to begin running parallel to the wall of the building.

I was panting in no time at all, but Sergeant Feral didn't let up on the pace. We ran once around the outside of the building, and it sucked. Then we ran again around the outside of the building, and I was ready to drop. I've never been good at running, and I'm pretty sure I had just run further than I'd ever run before at one time.

As we finished the second lap, Sergeant Feral held up a fist next to his head. "Platoon, HALT!" He shouted.

More beautiful words had never been spoken. I immediately stopped running. I've seen enough military moved to know that it was probably best to stand at attention, which I did, blinking furiously to keep my eyes clear of sweat.

My legs felt wet noodles, and my pajamas were drenched in sweat. Sergeant Feral turned to inspect me.

"That was a PATHETIC showing, recruit!" He shouted, perhaps a bit less loudly than before. "What if there was a Ghoul chasing you? You expect to be able to get away running like that? What if a Ghoul was attacking a civilian? How would you close the distance to engage them?

Sorilda appeared in front of me.

"He's right, you know." She said, looking down her nose at me. "You need to improve your physicality if you want to stand a chance out there."

"What do you mean?" I said, whispering out of the corner of my mouth.

"While you were sleeping like a rock, I was out there, looking around the city. I saw a Ghoul _killing _someone. Then, while it was eating, another Ghoul attacked it. The first Ghoul grew some kind of tail looking thing, and fought the other Ghoul and drove it off, then went back to its meal."

"What?" I said. "And you didn't do anything?"

"I can't." Sorilda said. "I'm a spren. You are the Radiant, the one who must act to change the world."

I shook my head. I was just so...

"Recruit! Who on God's mediocre Earth are you talking to?"

"My Spren, sergeant!" I responded.

After all, wasn't honesty usually the best policy?

"And what in creation is that?"

"It grant me my Radiant Powers, sergeant!" I said in my best parade ground voice.. "Sorilda, please appear for Sargent Feral!"

To me, nothing visibly happened, but Sargent Feral raised an eyebrow.

"Well, you have your own Tinkerbell." He said. "How are you doing, Tinkerbell?"

"My name is Sorilda." Sorilda said.

"Recruit, drop and give me twenty!" Sargent Feral said. "Keep your fairy in line!"

"Yes, sergeant!" I said, dropping into a pushup position and beginning the set. It seemed vaguely unfair that I was being punished for Sorilda talking.

I got halfway through the set before I collapsed from exhaustion.

"Pathetic, recruit!" Sargent Feral announced. "You have five minutes, then you're running another lap.

[x]

I stepped out of the shower and began putting on my freshly-issued Marshal uniform. Sargent Feral had worked me for more than an hour outside, then finally told me to go clean myself up and report to the mess hall for breakfast.

As I finished putting on my shirt, a problem occurred to me. I had no idea where the mess hall was. I stepped out of the shower cell I was using and exited the men's locker room and looked around. I spotted a young woman in a black lab coat at the end of the hallway. I walked over towards her.

She was fairly tall, with long black hair, and a smile on her face. Her features reminded me of a mug of hot chocolate, warm and comforting.

"Hello." I said. "Could you point me to the Enlisted Mess Hall?"

"Sure." She said, pointing. "It's that way, around the first corner, and on your left. Are you new here?"

"Yeah." I replied. "I just joined up yesterday."

She winced. "Today must be your first day of recruit training, then."

"Yeah." I said. "It sucks."

"I know." She said. "I'm in science, and I still had to go through the basic stuff."

"Really?" I said. "Why?"

"Every Marshal is a warrior." She quoted. "A lot of us aren't frontline fighters, but we all have basic training. We all have to be ready to defend ourselves in case the Ghouls breach the compound."

"I guess that makes sense." I said. "I have to be going now. See you around?"

She smiled. "Sure. Feel free to drop by lab three if you're ever free. My name is Sara, by the way. Sara Alston."

"Nice to meet you." I said. "I'm Jack Argentum."

"Really?" She said. "You're him? That guy who took down five ghouls with just a sword?"

I shook my head. "It was three Ghouls, and a very special sword."

"Was it a Quinque?" She asked, leaning forward.

"No." I said. "It was a Shardblade."

I held out my hand and called to Sorilda. My Shardblade appeared out of mist in my hand. "This is it."

"Wow." She said. "What is it?"

"Heck if I know." I said. "But it can cut through just about anything."

"Wow." She said. "You have to drop by Lab Three for me to take a look at this sometime soon."

"Will do." I said, as I vanished my Shardblade.

"Well, see you." She said, waving as I turned and made my way in the direction she had indicated.

I quickly arrived at the bustling mess hall. Men and woman in black lab coats and uniforms like the one I wore sat at tables, eating and talking, or else moving abroad carrying trays loaded with food.

I walked into the mess hall and toward the line at the back. I grabbed a tray and started loading it with pancakes, bacon, and scrambled eggs. When I was done, I walked out into the Mess Hall and started looking for a place to sit.

"Hey, new guy! Over here!" A voice called. I saw a young man about my age waving at me. I walked over towards him.

"How could you tell I was new?" I asked, sitting down in an empty seat next to him.

"You just have that 'new guy' look, you know?" He said.

"I just got here yesterday." I said.

"Isn't that outside the normal training cycle?" He asked.

"Yeah, I guess." I said. "I think I'm a special case, though."

"Huh." He said. "I guess so. Anyway, what's your specialization?"

"I don't know." I replied. "What is there?"

"Well, there's a bunch of categories of desk jobs, then there's Investigations, Kinetic Confrontation, and Special Issues." He said. "Plus science, but you can tell them by the lab coats."

"Um... I'm Kinetic or Special, probably, then." I said.

"Awesome." He said. "I'm Special. Name's Alphonse. I just finished G Course, so I'm a full member of Special Issues, now. I've got some leave time to celebrate it, too."

"Congratulations." I said, taking a bite of my eggs.

Shockingly, they were _really good_. Like, perfectly cheesy and fluffy, and not overcooked or anything.

I quickly gobbled down the rest of my food. I knew enough about Basic Training to know that irregular food supplies were a core part of training. All of it was surprisingly good.

As I ate, I chatted with Alphonse, trying to get information about the world. I found out that we were in the New York City, and that were at the 66th U.S. Court District Marshal Headquarters. There were branch offices across the city, but this was the center of operations.

I had just finished my last strip of Bacon when I felt someone tap my shoulder. I turned around and saw Marshal Chandler standing behind me, frowning.

"We need to talk." He said.

I sat down in Marshal Chandler's office, across his large mahogany desk from him.

"Let's get down to business." He said. "You are a ghost, Mr. Argentum. What I want to know is how, and why, and who you are."

I had suspected this might be a problem. No records of me would exist in this world, but I wasn't sure what I could have done about it. I decided to play dumb.

"What do you mean, Marshal?" I asked.

"There are no records of you, or traces of traces of records." Marshal Chandler said. "As far as the internet and our databases are concerned, you didn't exist until about nine PM yesterday in that alley. That's not how it's supposed to work."

I raised an eyebrow.

"Look." He said. "Normally, when a person or a Ghoul deletes their past, they create a new identity for themselves. Otherwise, they're a dead giveaway, like you were. Not to mention that our IT people are _very_ good. Almost no one can destroy a record beyond their ability to trace.

"Fine." I said. "I was raised in a remote town in West Virginia that didn't have computers, or like the government, so we didn't report anything to them. That's why there are no records of me."

"Bullshit." Chandler said.

"What do you mean, sir?" I asked.

Chandler raised three fingers.

"One." He said. "Your teeth are too good."

I frowned. "Excuse me?"

"Your teeth. If you really were raised in some backwater so remote that there wouldn't even be a birth certificate of you, I doubt you'd have nice straight, white teeth. I'd say you've had some orthodontic work done." Chandler said. "That doesn't mesh with your story. Second, you were naked when we found you, except for the armor. Now, this is New York, but I think we'd be able to find _some_ record of either a naked man or a man in armor prowling the city streets."

"Okay..." I said.

"And lastly is the fact that _humans don't do that_." He said. "Live in remote, unconnected villages, that is. They'd be easy prey for Ghouls Now, Ghouls might, but I had the lab run your bloodwork again, and you are still clearly human. So, then, where did you come from?"

"Until yesterday, I lived in another one much like this one, except for the absence of Ghouls, until I was hit by a bus." I said, doing my best to keep my face straight. "I died, but a mysterious voice offered me the opportunity to be a hero, which I foolishly accepted. Then I woke up here with mysterious powers, and I got into a fight with a Ghoul. Some Marshals found me, and I generously agreed to join their crusade for Humanity. After some truly brutal training, they started rudely questioning my identity. And it looks like our narrative has caught up with the present."

"You're shitting me." Chandler said.

"That's actually the truth." I said. "But it's pretty absurd. So why don't we go with that remote village thing."

Chandler leaned forward and started massaging his temples with his fingers. "You're putting me in a hell of a situation, Argentum."

"I'm sorry." I said. "But I'll do my best to make myself worth it."

"I hope so." Chandler said, reaching under his desk. He removed a large wooden box, about the size of two large attaché cases stack on top of each other.

"Also, this arrived in the mail for you." He said. "You might be rather interested in what it contains."

He set the box on his desk with the latch facing me and pushed it towards me.

I opened it.

Inside was the largest Gemstone I had ever seen, a massive sapphire the size of my head. It was set into an intricate mesh of golden wire, and it was glowing brightly.

A Fabrial. A device from_ The Way of Kings_ that used gemstones and Stormlight to create magical effects.

Surrounding it were ten smaller gemstones, or for each of the Ten Essences, each glowing with a dimmer light. It was a treasure trove of Stormlight.

I noticed a small card in the corner of the box. I picked it up and opened it.

_Jack,_

_Just a little something to help you on your journey. The large gem will fill itself with Stormlight on every tenth day, and each of the smaller gems will restore themselves on one of the intervening days._

_Use this gift wisely. You will have need of it._

_A Benefactor_

Sorilda appeared in the air next to me, gazing at the wealth of Stormlight.

"This is just what we needed." She said. "With this... We can do what needs to be done."

I simply nodded, wondering what she thought needed to be done.

"In any case." Chandler said. "As a full U.S. Marshal, I have a fair degree of leeway in what I do and who I deputize. What I'm going to do here is this. I'm going to classify your origins, and behind that smokescreen, we're going to go with that remote village story. I don't know if anyone will buy it, but if you get results, that won't matter."

"Thank you, Marshal." I said.

"Now, I believe that Sergeant Feral will be looking for you." The Marshal said. "He should be waiting for you at the shooting range. If I were you, I won't keep him waiting."

I nodded, stood up, and made for the door.

[x]

"This." Sergeant Feral said, holding up a large battle rifle. "Is the Mark Sixteen Enhanced Battle Rifle. It is the standard firearm of the U.S. Marshals, what most deputies use when hunting Ghouls. This weapon fires a 7.62 cartridge at a cyclic rate of fire exceeding seven hundred and fifty rounds per minute. It features a barrel of Quinque steel for optimal performance when firing Q Bullets, and four rails for mounting all the accessories a Marshal could want. It is an accurate, reliable, and devastating weapon."

He handed the rifle to me. I accepted it.

"And under most circumstances, it is little more than an annoyance against Ghouls."

"Why, Sergeant?" I asked, falling back into 'recruit' mode as I looked down at the weapon.

"As you know, Quinques, Quinque Steel, and Q bullets are all made from material taken from dead Ghouls." Sergeant Feral explained. "That severely limits the number of effective weapons and effective ammunition we can supply our agents with."

Sergeant Feral picked up a 36 round box magazine and held in in his hand. "Now, we'd love to use pure Quinque Steel in making Q Bullets, but then there would only be enough to issue a few magazines to each agent. This is a problem, because Ghouls are fast and hard to hit in combat, meaning we have to water down the Quinque content of the bullets to give our people enough ammo to have a chance of doing some damage."

"So how do we win, Sergeant?" I asked.

"Full Quinques." He said. "They don't need ammo, so we can kill any number of Ghouls with them to harvest the materials to make more weapons."

The Sergeant cracked a grim smile. "Or, if none are available, we use airstrikes. Stay out of MANPADS range and there's not a whole lot a Ghoul can do about them."

"Wait." I said. "The Ghouls have MANPADS?"

"Well, they might." Sergeant Feral said. "We can't know for sure, but we're pretty sure they have at least a few. Even the Chinese aren't crazy enough to sell serious hardware to Ghouls directly, but if the Ghouls came to them disguised as, say, al-Shabaab or whoever, they might sell, if for no reason other than to screw with us. So we can't be too careful. All our choppers and planes have next-gen ECM and unbelievable Point Defense, though, so that helps."

I stifled my surprise at this casual mention of Point Defense on aircraft. Back home, that sort of thing was still in the theoretical stages, but given that the Marshals here faced a serious asymmetric threat from Ghouls with shoulder-fire weapons, it made sense that they'd favor active defense measures.

"Anyway, I'm going to start you out on this baby." Sergeant Feral said, tapping the Mark 16. "Once you're proficient with that, we'll look into finding something bigger for you to use while wearing your armor."

"How do you know about my Shardplate?" I asked, surprised.

"Everyone knows about that armor." The sergeant said. "Its the talk of the base."

I was the center of attention. Great.

[x]

Marshal Chandler considered the boy who was currently training with Sergeant Feral. His origin was certainly an enigma, but at present, he seemed to be too useful to dispose of.

That was not to say that Chandler trusted him. In fact, he had two Deputies with the best Quinques at his disposal trailing the boy at present, ready to subdue him should it appear that he had anything other than the best interests of Humanity at heart.

Chandler reached into his desk and removed a bottle of whiskey and a small cup. He didn't allow himself to drink often, but this situation seemed to call for it.

He had tried to trace the origin of the package that had arrived for the boy, to no avail. It simply had appeared in the directory of the Postal Service one day, and had been delivered to the Marshal building like the perfectly replicated delivery instructions ordered. No one had been the wiser.

The Marshals had tried X-raying the case before giving it to him, but it had appeared to simply contain paper. Chandler knew he had taken a calculated risk by letting the boy open the present in his office, but as he figured, a group with the capability to simply make people disappear from the system and move them through the city in strange garb without being noticed at all could eliminate him using much simpler means.

After all, he lived something of a high-risk lifestyle. And perhaps that was why he had deputized the boy instead of detaining him.

Like it or not, Humanity was slipping into the maw of a predator. Something had to change, and this boy seemed to hold more potential gain than loss.

Praying that he was right about the boy, Chandler took a long sip of whiskey and opened a secure file on his computer. There was something else the needed to look into.

[x]

I lay in my provided bed, thinking back on the day. I had been too exhausted to think back on it much, but I would never see home again. I was a sad though, but it didn't seem to affect me as much as I though it should.

I wondered why.

Maybe it was because I had a purpose here. Protecting Humanity from the monstrous Ghouls was certainly a noble cause, and maybe the possibility to be part of something bigger than myself was the reason for my lack of homesickness.

Still, I was exhausted from the day of training, and I quickly slipped off into sleep.

I found myself standing on a black surface under an endless white sky. I looked around in confusion, wondering what just happened.

"Hello." Sorilda said.

I turned toward the source of the voice. Sorilda was standing there, fully human sized, like a hologram made of silvery light. She was dressed in what looked like Shardplate, sans the helmet, which seemed shaped to extenuate her impressive figure. She had hair down to her shoulders that seemed lightly shaded in the silvery hologram, and a smile on her face.

"Welcome." She said, spreading her hands. "To the center of your mind."

"Um." I said. "What?"

Sorilda frowned. "I was trying to be dramatic. In essence, you're dreaming. Here, this space can be whatever you want it to be, but for our purposes, we want it to be as close to reality as possible."

"And our purposes are...?"

"Training, of course!" Sorilda said.

"Aren't I scheduled to get enough of that in the real world already?" I asked, frowning. "I thought that I'd at least get _some_ sleep."

"Don't worry about that." Sorilda responded. "You can handle it. We don't normally do this, but then again, we don't normally have to get Knights Radiant combat-ready as we do you."

"And why do I have to be ready so quickly?"

"Because the winds of war are blowing." Sorilda said gravely. "A storm is coming, and you _must_ be ready to face it."

I raised an eyebrow. "How do you know that? I mean, things seem pretty bad here, but I think the Marshals are doing a pretty good job, all things considered."

"Call it an instinct." The Sovereignspren said. "I don't remember a lot, but I do know that the Knights Radiant don't appear when they're not needed."

As she said that, I remembered an odd tidbit from _Words of Radiance_. The numbers of Radiants increased dramatically just before a Desolation, an attack by the Voidbringers, creatures that intended to destroy all of existence.

Given that this would have gone from zero Radians to one, an increase of approximately infinity percent, I wonder just how bad things were about to get.

I held my hand out to the side and summoned by Shardblade. It appeared immediately, not even condensing from mist like it usually did.

"I suppose we should begin immediately, then." I said.

Sorilda held out a hand, and I felt the sensation that heralded the arrival of my Shardplate. I held my sword up in a guard stance, and Sorilda shook her head.

"What stance is that supposed to be?" Sorilda said. "It's not right for any of them. We're going to start with Flamestance. Now, for that, you hold your sword in one had. Now, set yourself perpendicular to me, and..."

It went on like that for some time. We practiced basic footwork and stances for quite some time, though I had no idea how long it lasted. Then we moved on to basic thrusts and slashes, and then parries.

Eventually, the world around me seemed to begin to glow blurry.

"You're waking up." Sorilda said. "See you on the other side."

With that, I blacked out.

I awoke lying in my bed. I froze for a moment, expecting another bucket of ice water. When none came, I sat up and reached for my glasses, only to realize that I hadn't had them since I had arrived here. I guess the Stormlight had healed my eyes without me even realizing.

I felt a pang of sadness with that realization. Yet another link connecting me to home had been severed, and I hadn't even realized it. Would I forget my world entirely?

No, that would be ridiculous. But I was drifting away. Was this natural, or some effect of my transference?

Pushing back the wave of homesickness that was rising in me at the thought, I looked over at might nightstand. There was a post-it note lying next to the clock, which read 0547. I suppose I was still waking up early.

I picked up the note and read it.

_Get some breakfast, then meet me at the front gate for morning PT. I hope you know that I'm not this nice to my normal recruits, but the Marshal told me 'not to break you'._

Sergeant Feral was such a nice guy. Not wanting to keep him waiting, I got out of bed, then walked over to the empty dresser where I was keeping the case I had been given. I pulled it open, then opened the case, letting the radiance of the Stormlight within spill out over me.

Placing my fingers on the large Gemheart, I inhaled a portion of the Stormlight. I felt it wash surge through me, washing away the lingering fatigue and invigorating me. I grabbed a uniform from the top of the dresser, changed into it, and then grabbed the smokestone and put it in my inside pocket. It didn't break my profile or stand out too much, though I would have to look into getting smaller stones to store my Stormlight in.

But for now, I expected I would need this.

With that, I exited my room and went to breakfast.

[x]

Just like that, two weeks passed. I trained with Sargent Feral while awake and with Sorilda while asleep. My physical fitness improved considerably, a process aided by my discreet use of Stormlight, and I learned how to fire a rifle under combat conditions. I also started learning the basics of each of the ten Alethi Sword Forms, and was slightly less incompetent with a blade now.

I also learned quite a bit about Ghouls. Apparently, in addition to having skin as strong as steel, they were somewhat regenerative and possessed a unique predatory organ called a kagune. The exactly form it took varied from Ghoul to Ghoul, but it was in short an extra set of limbs they could grow on command and use as highly lethal weapons in combat. It also made then even stronger and faster when used.

This organ came in four main types. The type had a strong influence on what form it took and what its capabilities were. Each type of kagune trumped another type, which had a strong influences on Ghoul on Ghoul or Ghoul on Quinque combat.

As I was considering all this, I pulled the trigger on the combat rifle. It fire. I corrected for the recoil and fired again. And again. And again. As my magazine clicked empty, Sergeant Feral pressed a button to bring the target towards me.

"Nice grouping." He said, gesturing at the scatter of bullets in the target's right shoulder. "But your accuracy could use a little work."

"Yes sergeant." I said. "But then I wouldn't get the chance to use my sword, now would I?"

The sergeant was opening his mouth to respond when a wail klaxon filled the air.

"ALL PERSONNEL." An automated voice said. "HIGH TEMPERATURE THERMAL SIGNATURES DETECTED APPROACHING FACILITY. ALL PERSONNEL REPORT TO DESIGNATED BATTLE STATIONS OR SURVIVAL SHELTERS. REPEAT, ALL PERSONNEL..."

"Shit!" Sargent Feral said.

"What's going on?" I asked.

"Thermal signatures are approaching, and they wouldn't be announcing it if they weren't consistent with deployed kagunes." He explained. "Ghouls are attacking the base. Shit. You get to shelter gamma. You know where that is. I need to get to my battle station.

"Yes sergeant." I said.

Seconds later, he was out of the room. I waited a moment, then began running towards the door. Like hell I was going to hide when we were under attack.

[x]

As I made my way towards the surface, several problems with what I was about to do occurred to me. For one thing, I had no idea which direction or directions the Ghouls were attacking from. That could make it hard to make an intercept attempt.

Second, I was still relatively inexperienced in combat. Sure, I had eliminated three Ghouls on my first night in this world, but the autopsy of those monsters had revealed that they were the very lowest rung of Ghoul, pathetic creatures by the standards of the monsters we hunted.

Third, I carried only a limited amount of Stormlight. I had a mostly-infused fist-sized diamond in my pocket, and I doubted that I had time to go all the way back to my quartets to stock up. Therefore, I would need to limit my use of Lashings and be sure to defeat the Ghouls before I ran out of Stormlight.

I reached the staircase, and inhaled a small amount of Stormlight to speed my progress. As I took the stairs three at a time, I listened for the sounds of combat. I could vaguely make out gunshots coming from the direction of the north entrance.

As I reached the ground level, I called out for Sorilda.

"Sorilda?" I said. "I could really use my Shardplate about now."

"Of course." Sorilda said, her voice seeming to come out of nowhere.

I felt the warmth and constriction of my Shardplate appearing on my body, then I took off again towards the north entrance, much faster now.

The hallways I made my way through seemed mostly abandoned, which I found surprising. The Marshals probably took their battle stations drills seriously. I didn't summon my Shardblade yet, for fear of cutting up the walls or floor. There people had been good to me; I didn't want to ruin their nice building.

The sounds of gunfire grew more intense as I drew nearer to the north entrance. I rounded a corner, just for a man in a security uniform firing a handgun to back into me. He stumbled as he bumped into my Shardplate.

Then three shards of blood red crystal took him in the chest.

I felt a jolt run through his body as the crystals impacted. Then he began to slide down my armored body, incoherent gurglings slipping from his lips.

Muttering a curse, I held out my right hand and called Sorilda to me, ducking back around the corner and laying the security man down on the ground. My Shardblade appeared in my hand, water running off the blade as it it had condensed from mist.

A second later, sprang back around the corner and charged, inhaling Stormlight. I taped the wall next to me and willed a small amount of Stormlight into it, creating a Reverse Lashing. Objects in flight would be drawn to the wall by a considerable gravitational force. I hadn't yet experimented with bullets, but-

My efforts drew fruit almost immediately as a volley of crystals impacted the wall. I looked up, seeing a confused-looking Ghoul and the end of the hallway, a pair of shimmering wings red as blood handing behind her shoulders.

"My turn." I muttered, closing the last steps to her with Stormlight-enhanced speed. I slashed my Shardblade towards her neck.

The metal fuzzed as it impacted, passing through her flesh easily. The Ghoul gasped and stepped back as my Shardblade struck, one hand shooting up to her neck as she fired another barrage of crystals at me.

They impacted my chest plate and shattered, fracturing the metal somewhat. The cracks began to leak Stormlight as I reversed my swing and brought my blade around and slashed it through the Ghoul's head.

My Shardblade severed hair as I swung it through the Ghoul. She stumbled backwards, out of reach of my next strike, then stepped in and launched a flurry of punches at my side opposite my sword arm. I lowered my hand to block, and I felt some of the plates on my lower arm start to fracture as I brought my blade back around and slashed it though the Ghoul's chest.

This time, she dropped, eyes burning out like tiny coals.

I moved forward, for the first time in my life seeking fresh prey.


	3. Chapter 3

I advanced out of the Marshal building, Shardblade at the ready.

The scene outside was one of complete chaos. Ghouls seemed to be everywhere, dueling with Marshals carrying Quinques of all descriptions. As I watched, a ghoul with kagune tentacles fighting a Marshal carrying a long whip beat down the woman's weapon. Then it ran her through.

Flinching as the woman crumpled, I turned and charged towards the tentacle ghoul. It resembled a middle-aged man wearing a sweater, who happened to have four garnish yellow tentacles coming off his lower back.

He turned and struck at me with his tentacles. I knocked one aside with my Shardblade, then sidestepped with the speed of Plate and Light, and swung my Shardblade in a long arc, batting away each of the tentacles before they could adjust to my new position.

Then I did something stupid.

I quarter-Lashed myself upwards, then jumped into the air. As my feet left the ground, I lashed myself towards the enemy ghoul. I 'fell' through the air towards him, Shardblade at the ready.

He drew back his tentacles for another strike, but I was falling too fast. I held a leg out as it stuck, kicking him in the face. There was really only one thing to say.

"Dynamic entry!" I shouted, as the ghoul crumpled backwards, blood trailing from his ruined face.

I cut the Lashing drawing me toward the Ghoul, then recovered, slashing out with my Shardblade toward the Ghoul's upper body before my feet hit the ground. As my Shardblade passed through his upper chest, the Ghoul fell to one knee.

As he looked up at me with red and black eyes, my feet touched the ground and I brought down my Shardblade like an icepick, sending it down the ghoul's spine.

My foe dropped, eyes burning out. I looked around the battlefield, and saw something incredible.

Marshal Chandler was standing before a loose semicircle of Ghouls, sword in hand. His weapon was a four-foot length of jet black steel with a hexagonal pattern of pulsing red lines running down the blade. There was a strange circular _thing _at the base of the blade that seemed to be spinning, almost like a miniature tokamak reactor.

As I watched, Chandler swung the blade and parried two tentacle stabs in quick succession, moving faster than I thought I human could without Stormlight. He was holding the entire left flank, all on his own.

Then he went on the offensive, side stepping a barrage of crystals from a winged ghoul before bringing the blade around and slashing the tip of the weapon across the tentacled ghoul from hip to shoulder. He reversed his swung and slashed the ghoul a second time, then impaled the Ghoul on his blade and swung it around, stepping beside the corpse of his slain foe to use it as a shield against the retaliation of its comrades.

I needed to do something to help, but I was all the way across the battlefield from me.

Without knowing what I was doing, I reached out with my mind. A impossible being appeared in front of me.

**Tell me a truth. **It said.

"I'm lost, alone, and afraid." I muttered.

**This is true.**

The world around me dissolved. The Marshals and Ghouls of the battlefield gave way to a sea of tiny glass bead, over with danced flames.

Shadesmar.

I had a diamond, and a fair amount of Stormlight. As I considered, I could feel the beads under me seem to solidify in response to my wishes. Now, how would I help Chandler?

I reached out with my mind, feeling the swarms of nanoscopic _things _that made up the Cognitive essence of the air.

With a deep breath, I released Stormlight and willed myself back to the Physical world.

As my vision returned to the warscape before me, light flashed and five shards of crystal appeared in the air in front of me. I held out a hand and sprayed Stormlight towards them, lashing half their weight upwards, making them weightless.

Then I lased each of them ten times towards the most menacing of the ghouls attacking Chandler, a large woman with a pair of blood red coils wrapped around her arms.

The crystal shards blurred in the air as they shot toward the embattled Marshal and his opponents, but my aim was true, and the shards took the woman in the back, and she screamed, her arms shooting back towards her head, a knee-jerk reaction.

Chandler took the opportunity to remove her head with a long, two handed chop.

A second later, I realized how foolish what I had just done was. I had used more than half of my Stormlight, and the storm in my veins had calmed significantly. That would impact my physical capabilities, and leave me with less healing in the event that I was injured.

Still, I was here, and I had to do my best. I charged toward Marshal Chandler and the three ghouls battling him. Even with my depleted Stormlight, I moved like the wind.

I never even noticed the man who saved my life.

I heard a faint sound of impact over the sound of the battle, and then something struck my heels. I spun around. Was I under attack?

Sergeant Feral lay on the ground in front of me, a ghoul tentacle through his chest. A rinkaku type, unless I missed my guess. Sergeant Feral had said that they were renowned for their strength, but-

Holy shit. Sergeant Feral was dead.

And judging by the positioning of his body, he had just jumped, as if to put himself between me and the tentacle now spearing him.

A jolt ran through my body. Sergeant Feral had just died, to save me.

Someone had just died.

For me.

My knees suddenly felt weak, and I wanted to cry. I wasn't supposed to be on this battlefield in the first place, and my being here had led to another man's death.

I screamed, grabbing my Shardblade in both hands and charging, blade held by my head. I would _KILL _this damn ghoul, which wore the skin of a girl about my age, albeit with two tentacles, or perhaps tails, extending from the base of her spine.

One of the monster's two combat tails, swung toward me as the other extracted itself from Sergeant Feral's body.

I sprang into the air, my body still held up by the quarter-Lashing from before. The edge of the tail caught the bottom of my feet, sending me tumbling in slow motion. I could see Stormlight leaking from my sabatons as I fell.

On instinct, I half-Lashed myself to the side, the acceleration causing me to just barely avoid being hit by the ghoul's follow up strike. I cut the lashing almost immediately, but I was still reeling, not used to the motions my body had just gone through.

I landed, by upwards Lashing and Shardplate preventing it from being as bad as it could have been. I sprang to my feet, falling into Ironstance as I did so. Though unconventional, my tumble had accomplished the objective of bringing me closer to the monster that had killed Sergeant Feral.

As monster brought its tails around to target me, I was already on the move, albeit like a drunk. That may have actually been to my benefit, as the ghoul missed its first stab towards me. I struck the appendage with my Shardblade, knocking it down as I closed on the ghoul.

Returning my Shardblade to its position by my head just as I came within striking distance of the ghoul, I delivered a powerful overhand chop to the ghoul.

Its eyes went wide as my sword passed through it and its tails went wild.

I took another step forward and, through the transparent mystical metal of my helm, or eyes met.

In that instant, I saw the monster for what it was, a scared little girl.

Why were we fighting?

The moment shattered as I remembered that she had killed Sergeant Feral. I delivered a Shardplate-enhanced kick to her midsection as I stepped inside her reach, then pressed my shoulder against her as she recovered and delivered an underhand punch that could shatter bone to her gut.

As she reeled away from me, I stepped back and slashed her across the shoulders.

This time, the Blade severed flesh, cutting cleanly and sending a torrent of blood into the air as the ghouls head and shoulders fell off her body and dropped to the side, eyes still wide.

Her body fell to the ground with a dull thump.

My eyes widened as a saw her hit the ground next to Sergeant Feral. I nearly threw my Blade to the side, but my father's words rang in my head, advising me to never drop my weapon during a battle.

My father.

Who I would never see again.

I could feel wetness on my cheek against the metal of my helm as I surveyed the battlefield. Chandler decapitated the last of the Ghouls fighting him just as a heavy weapons squad emerged from the building to mow down the last two wounded Ghouls on the right side.

As I watched the Marshals secure the facility, I fell to my knees and felt tears begin to soak the uniform under my Shardplate.

What was wrong with me?

[x]

I stood in Marshal Chandler's office in my battle-scarred Shardplate, looking down at the floor. A good man had died because of me. There was simply no way around it. I probably wouldn't be considered a murderer in any decent court of law, but my actions had led to the death of another human being.

It felt terrible. I was terrible.

"Now, I assume you know why you are here." Marshal Chandler said.

I nodded.

"Now, while you're performance in battle was exemplary for an amateur, I cannot overlook the fact that it led to the death of Sergeant Feral."

"I will accept any punishment you see fit to assign me, Marhsal." I said miserably.

"Sergeant Feral made his choice of his own free will, so I cannot hold you _fully _responsible for his death. However, I can hold you responsible for going into battle without orders to do so."

"Yes, sir." I said.

"However, there is a complicating factor." Marshal Chandler shifted some papers on his desk. "Namely, the men consider you a hero. You've accumulated six ghoul kills in less than a month, and to be frank, your presence on that battlefield may have saved more lives than it destroyed."

I said nothing.

"In any case, I'm having you transferred while the Department Executives figure out what to do with you."

"What, sir?"

"I'm transferring you." Chandler said. "Specially, I'm sending you to Atlanta. Pack your bags; you have a bus to the airport in an hour."

[x]

I stood in my room, holding the case containing my Gemheart. It occurred to me that it was literally the only thing in this world I had to my name. I suppose that was fitting that a morally bankrupt person like me would be financially bankrupt as well.

"You can't keep blaming yourself for his death." Sorilda said, burning into existence next to me. "It's not good for either of us."

"What do you mean?" I asked, tilting my head.

"I am a Sovereignspren, spirit of mastery, leadership, nobility, and integrity." Sorilda said "You have potential as a leader, and that's why I'm here for you, and always will be, but being a leader means so many things. And one of those things is self-mastery."

"Like I have any of that." I said.

"You're getting better." Sorilda said. "But you can't let the doubt and guilt about what you did wear away at your certainty. We make choices, and we live with them. We are what we do. Accept that Sergeant Feral died for you, and don't let his sacrifice be in vain."

"But what if I'm not worth his sacrifice?" I said, voice wavering.

"Then grow to be worth his sacrifice." Sorilda said, radiating certainty. "Part of leadership is accepting that people must make sacrifices for the greater good. What makes a good leader is never letting one of those sacrifices be for nothing."

"But doesn't that go against 'Journey Before Destination' and First Ideal?" I asked.

"No." Sorilda said. "I said that people must make sacrifices, not that people must _be_ sacrificed. There is an important distinction, and for a leader, maintain that balance is walking on the edge of a razor. Sergeant Feral went to his death with clear eyes. Don't let that cloud yours."

"I suppose." I said as I walked toward the door, unconvinced by her worlds.

I turned around and to one last look at the room that had been my home for the past two weeks.

Then I turned around and took my first step towards an uncertain future.

I nearly bumped into Alphonse as I did so.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, stepping backwards.

"Oh, that?" He said. "I'm here to walk to the bus with you. I requested a transfer to the Atlanta office."

"You did?" I said. "Why?"

"Why do you think?" He said. "I want to be in the presence of a legend, and make sure he doesn't get too full of himself, given-"

"There's no danger of that." I muttered

"-his heroic deeds." Alphonse finished. "Besides, you're my friend."

"Really?" I said, looking up at him.

"Of course. We've eaten lunch together every day since I finished G Course, and _I_ think we're friends."

"Thanks." I said.

"By the way, did you really create crystals out of thin air during the battle?" Alphonse asked.

"Yeah." I said.

"Bullshit." Alphonse said. "There's no way that- Well, come to think of it, you summon your Shardblade out of nowhere, too, so I guess..."

He trailed off.

"It's process called Soulcasting." I said. "I use Stormlight to transform one substance into another."

"No kidding." He said. "You're serious?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"That's freaking amazing! Why did you never tell me about this?"

"I didn't exactly know I could do it until today." I said. "I didn't... Well, I discovered the power during the battle this morning."

"So, what else can you do?" He asked, as we began walking down the hallway toward the exit of the residential block.

"Well, I can turn anything into one of the Ten Essences." I said, straining my memory for a moment to remember them. "Zephyr, Vapor, Spark, Lucentia, Pulp, Blood, Tallow, Foil, Talus, and Sinew."

"So those are what?" Alphonse asked. "Are they like, categories?"

"Basically." I said. "Talus, for example, includes stone of all types, but the more complex the stone, the harder it is to create via Soulcasting. I have to understand what I'm creating before I can make it."

"Makes sense." Alphonse said.

As we stepped out into the lobby of the residential block, I spotted Sara Alston sitting in a chair looking at a magazine in her lap.

"Oh, hey." She said, looking up from her magazine. "I was looking for you guys."

"Why?" I muttered. Why anyone would want to be around me was beyond me.

"Because I have a bus to catch, and I don't know where it is." She said.

"A bus to where?" Alphonse asked.

She looked down at her hand, which appear to have writing on it in small, neat script. "Liberty Newark Airport." She said. "I have a 5:15 flight to Atlanta."

"Why?" Alphonse asked.

"Because I requested a transfer." She said, pointing at me. "You think I'd give up a chance to study something like him so easily?"

"Me?" I said. "Really?"

"Yeah." She said. "I could write a _paper_ about him. So what were you guys talking about?"

"Soulcasting." Alphonse said. "Apparently, this guy can turn things into other things."

"What, really?" Sara said. "Like, Alchemy?"

"It's a bit more mystical than that." I said. "But you've got the right idea."

"What, you could turn led into gold?" Alphonse said.

"Well, gold is a metal, so I suppose that would fall under Foil." I said. "It's not a complex composite, either, so I guess I could do it. I mean, the structure of gold is pretty simple, right?"

"It's a face-center cubic cell unit." Alphonse said. "With a density of 19.30 grams per cubic centimeter, and has an empirical atomic radius of 144 picometers. Is that enough for you?"

Sara raised an eyebrow. The lobby was silent for a moment.

"Why do you know that?" Sara asked.

Alphonse took a step back, looking flustered. "It's not like I memorized it on the off chance that I would meet a emotionally vulnerable Alchemist I could scam into producing gold for me. Come on. Turn that chair into gold, and then we can divvy it up three ways. What could go wrong?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure that stealing." I said. "I mean, that's not our chair."

"I'll overbid on something at a seized property auction." Alphonse said. "Don't worry about that."

"What about the economic effect of just creating gold out of nowhere?" Sara said. "Some countries base their whole economies on gold sales. We gold derail whole nations!"

"Sara! I am ashamed of you!" Alphonse said, in what I was pretty sure was mock indignation. "We would be _freeing_ those countries from the Natural Resource Curse. Don't you know that an excessive endowment of valuable resources can stunt the social development of a country?"

Sara and I both stared at him for a moment.

"You know what?" I said. "I get the feeling that he'll never give up on this one."

I set down my gemstone case, opened it, and removed the Amethyst. That was the one for Soulcasting metals. I breathed in a bit of the Stormlight from my sapphire Gemheart, and then closed the case.

_I want to visit Shadesmar._ I thought, standing back up.

For a moment, nothing happened. Then the impossible creature appeared before me. Neither of my friends seemed to notice it.

**A truth**. It said.

"Alphonse is an idiot, and a very smart man." I said.

**This will do**. The creature said.

The world around me folded away to nothing as Shadesmar took shape around me. With an act of will, I forced the glass beads below me to from a platform for me to stand on. I reached out toward the bead that I instinctively recognized as one of the chairs in the lobby.

"Become gold." I said.

"I am a chair." The chair said.

"But you could be a chair, _made out of gold_." I said.

"I am a chair." The chair said.

"If you do, I will give you Stormlight. Investiture. Presence in the Cognitive Realm." I said, trying in some abstract sense to press my will against that of the chair.

"I am a chair."

I was not going to lose to some _CHAIR_! My will surged forward, and I willed my stormlight toward the chair's Cognitive Essence.

"...I am gold." The chair said at last, absorbing my Stormlight with a small pop.

"I want to return to the physical world." I said, feeling the platform I was standing on begin to soften as the spheres below me becoming less respondent due to my lack of Stormlight.

I wasn't sure what happened, but the physical world seemed to _fold_ into existence around me. Sara and Alphonse were staring at something. I felt a wave of exhaustion wash over me, as if my body and gone and ran a marathon while I was in Shadesmar. Wearily, I turned to look at what Sara and Alphonse were staring at.

My first reaction was that the chair seemed to have shrunk down into a shiny, yellow, vaguely chair-shaped blob much less than half the original height of the chair.

A blob that happened to be made out of pure gold.

"Wow." Alphonse said, looking at the thirty-odd pound blob of gold. "Jack, chop this baby up with your Shardblade and we'll split of the pieces for easy carrying."

"Alright." I said, holding out my hand and summoning my Shardblade. _You could stand to be a little smaller right now_. I thought, and my Blade shrunk down to the size of a dagger.

As Sara stared in awe, I knelt down next to the blob of gold and began cubing in. In seconds, we had a pile of gold chunks, amounting to more money than I'd ever seen in one place in my whole life.

I picked up a few of the chunks and started handing them to my friends, who put them in their bags, I glanced at the clock.

"I think we have a plane to catch." I said.

[x]

"...And that," Alphonse whispered, "Is how use three are going to from a multinational corporation."

We were sitting around a small table in the mess hall of the Atlanta Marshals Headquarters, eating a late dinner.

"That's never going to work." Sara said. "For one thing, half a million isn't enough to buy even a small gold mine. And no one would believe that we just 'found' a metric ton of gold. We'd be found out."

"Well." Alphonse said. "Half a million is enough to buy a big claim up in Alaska. We go up there for a season with a basic smelter, and mine some gold, then use the Soulcaster to make more. We use the smelter to add impurities, and sell it. With Jack Soulcasting some of the big rocks up there, we could make, say, ten million each easy."

"Okay, so that _might_ work." Sara said. "But have you forgotten that we have _jobs_? I'm not willing to give up on fighting ghouls just to exploit a friend."

"You're no fun." Alphonse muttered.

I took a bite of my pizza. It was nice to see Sara and Alphonse in such high spirits, but I still felt miserable. Despite everything that Sorilda, who was off looking at the new city, had said, I couldn't get over the fact that I had gotten a man, a man with my best interests at heart, killed.

I wondered why those ghouls had attacked the base, anyway. If they had just left well enough alone, Sergeant Feral wouldn't be dead right now. Had they attacked for food? Surely there were much easier targets to hit. Maybe they were trying to eliminate a threat?

Moving my fork through my rice idly, I wondered what it was like to be a ghoul, a member of a race able to crush upwards of ninety percent of all humans with ease. Was it like walking on clouds, holding all that power?

Then again, I was a Surgebinder, a powerhouse in my own right. I suppose I could ask myself.

But something was bothering me. Something about Soulcasting.

Then I remembered. Sinew, one of the Ten Essences, included all forms of flesh.

Including human flesh.

Suddenly, I lost my appetite.

"Guys, I think I need to talk to the Marshal." I said.

[x]

The district Marshal stared at me. He bore an uncanny resemblance to Director Fury of Marvel fame, right down to the eye patch.

It was uncanny.

"So you're telling me that you think you can manufacture human flesh that can sustain a ghoul?" He asked, voice flat.

"Essentially, sir, yes." I said. "I know I can produce blood that could hypothetically sustain an, again hypothetical, vampire, so I believe that I could produce tissue that would be able to feed a ghoul."

"And how in the world would you know that?" The Marshal said. "The vampire thing, I mean."

"My Spren told me." I said. "It has to do with the way that Soulcasting affects the Cognitive nature of an object, but I think this is worth a try."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that for a moment." The Marshal said. The Vampire thing. But what would you propose doing with this ability?"

"I believe that I could Soulcast a large number of corpse-like objects into existence, and use them to bait a trap for a ghoul." I said. "This could allow us to draw ghouls to use, granting us the initiative."

"Well, that's not a half-bad idea, if you're serious about this corpse thing." The Marshal said.

He pressed a button on his desk. "Dante, get in here."

Nothing happened for a moment. Then the door slammed open and a tall, green haired woman in business casual attire walked in. "What are you looking for?" She asked.

What's the territory of the most dangerous ghoul in the city?" The Marshal asked, pulling out a map.

I watched in awe as the woman rattled off three place names as she pointed at the map, all of them unfamiliar to me.

"That you, Dante." The Marshal said, as the woman turned and walked out of the room. "Accounting will have already transferred the usual fee to your account."

"Pleasure doing business with you." The woman, Dante, said.

"Excellent." The Marshal said. "Now, do you need anything to make these corpses?"

"I need something human shaped to transform." I said. "And a fluid to make blood."

"I'll get them to you." The Marshal said. "Operation Mousetrap starts tomorrow night."

[x]

And so, almost exactly twenty four hours later, I found myself standing in yet another back alley surrounded by body pillows, with a bucket of blood by my feet and a glowing Heliodor in my hand.

I knew for a fact that there were snipers watching the alley from at least two angles. Ostensibly, they were there to provide support, but I had a sneaking suspicion that they would shoot me if the Atlanta Marshal thought that there was something fishy going on.

That was probably because he had told me that, in no uncertain terms.

In any case, there was an impossible creature standing in front of me, asking for a truth.

"I'm a terrible person." I said.

**This will suffice.** The creature said.

Then I was in Shadesmar.

I reached out to the beads representing the body pillows and began to argue with them.

Arguing with a body pillow. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Eventually, they took by advice that being corpses with Stormlight would be much more interesting than being body pillows. They absorbed my Stormlight and transformed.

Returning to the physical world, I pick up the bucket of blood and began splashing it over the blobs of human flesh lying on the ground. They wouldn't pass as human bodies under any sort of medical examination, but hopefully they would smell enough like them to attract a ghoul.

Then I could start making amends for my actions.

I opened up a nearby empty dumpster, provided by the Marshals of Atlanta, and climbed in. I situated my Shardplate-clad self so I had easy access to one of the provided peepholes and waited.

And waited.

And then waited some more.

"Sorilda, can you go and scout to see if there are any people with black and red eyes around here?" I asked.

"Not if you don't want to lose your Shardplate." Sorilda said. "I can't be in two places at once."

I said nothing.

"Well, actually-" Sorilda began, but I cut her off with a quick _hush_.

A figure had dropped into the alley. Given that she, and the figure was female, had fallen at least twenty-five feet onto concrete, she had to be a Ghoul. She turned toward the blood-soaked bodies on the ground, and I saw her mask.

It was a... squirrel. That was an odd choice for a mask to be sure.

She was dressed in a tight black garment that covered her from head to toe, with a hood covering her head. She looked around, then started walking toward one of the 'bodies'.

I had to act before she started eating them; I doubted I had accurately reproduced the taste and texture of human flesh. When she was a few steps away from the bodies, I acted.

My Shardblade flashed, severing the bolts holding on the front of the dumpster. As it fell, I inhaled Stormlight and lashed myself forwards and towards the Ghoul.

I hoped the reaction of the predator, upon seeing a man in a divine suit of armor carrying a six foot sword would be to attack. If she ran, that would sort of ruin the plan.

Cutting the Lashing as soon as I was clear of the dumpster, I landed on my feet this time. Without another word, I charged the ghoul, Shardblade held in one hand, the beginning of Flamestance.

As I charged, a pair of brilliant red wings extended from the Ghoul's back. A ukaku type. I created a Reverse Lashing on the ground, just fractions of a second before a barrage of crystals shot from the ghoul's wings toward me.

I jumped as the Reverse Lashing pulled the projectiles downward. Combined, it caused the shards to pass under my feet as I closed on the enemy, swinging my Shardblade horizontally.

The enemy Ghoul moved faster than I expected, knocking my Shardblade away.

Then she hit me with the other wing.

The first strike hit my pauldron, cracking it. As the Ghoul brought back her wing and snapped it forward again, all in a fraction of a second, I caught the second blow on my Vambrace, which also cracked.

I launched another Shardblade attack as I jumped back, trailing Stormlight faintly. Maybe talk would cause her to lower her guard.

"I suppose you want to know how I lured you hear, and trapped you." I said, switching to Stonestance.

"You mean you didn't kill a whole bunch of people?" She said.

"What? No!" I said. "Of course not."

Unfortunately, my surprise caused me to lose the rigid strength that was the heart of Stonestance for a moment. My opponent sensed this, and launched a barrage of crystal shards at me.

Fortunately, I had three Reverse Lashings on the ground around me, which pulled the slivers downward with many times the force of normal gravity the moment they left the ghoul's wings. I'm not an idiot.

I leapt in the air and swung my blade in front of my feet, deflecting many of the projectiles. A few still hit, cracking my sabatons and grieves.

"Then where did all those bodies come from?" The ghoul demanded, charging me.

She swung both her wings at me at the same time. I caught the right wing on my Shardblade, but the left wing impacted my chest, sending a small web of cracks across my breastplate.

"I made them!" I said triumphantly, reaching my hand out toward the dumpster I had hidden in. "Like this!"

Stormlight sprayed from my hand, infusing the dumpster and Lashing it towards the ghoul. She leapt in the air to avoid it, but I had anticipated that, and was already throwing my Shardblade towards her.

The weapon darted through the air like a spear, taking the ghoul in the chest. It vanished, and I could vaguely hear the Ghoul let out a gasp.

She reached the peak of her jump and landed awkwardly, her kagune curling around her, and looked up at me.

"You said you made those bodies?" She said.

"Yup." I responded. "With Soulcasting."

She held her hands up. "I surrender." She said.

"Ah, come again?"

"On the condition that I will be treated humanely, I surrender myself to the United States Federal Marshals." She said. "You will treat me decently, correct?"

"Um... I mean, I would, but I'm not sure how much pull I have to make that happen." I said. "Give me a second to call HQ."

"Take your time." The Ghoul said. I was shocked by just how _human_ she sounded.

I reached down and removed a radio from an armored box looked to my waist.

"Um, if you don't mind." The ghoul said. "Could you look away?"

I raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"I'm really hungry." She said. "If that's really food, I'd like to eat some."

"I rolled my eyes. "You can eat, but I'm not taking my eyes off you." I said.

"Fine." The ghoul said, walking over to the corpses.

I raised my radio to my head and vanished my Shardplate helm.

"Atlanta HQ, this is Alethi 11, copy HQ?" I said.

"This is Atlanta Actual." The Atlanta Marshal said. "What is your situation? All green, I hope?"

"It's a little more complicated than that." I said. "Little Mouse surrendered."

"A Ghoul surrendered?" The Marshal said, sounding incredulous. "How did you manage that? If you cut off the limbs, that's a ploy. They might be able to grow them back."

"No, sir." I said. "I stabbed her once with my Shardblade, but she's mostly okay. She surrendered on the condition that she is treated humanely."

"And how do you propose we feed her?" The Marshal asked.

A strange sound filled the air. It was like something being ripped repeatedly, combined with a grossly exaggerated sound of chewing and swallowing.

The Ghoul had her mask off, and was tearing chunks of tissue off one of the Soulcast bodies and stuffing them in her mouth.

"Soulcasting, sir." I responded.

"And what in the name of Heaven is that sound?"

"Guilt free ghoul feeding, sir." I responded.

"I believe that's the first time I've believed that to be possible." The Marshal responded. "In any case, I'm sending a chopper to pick you up. Hold your position until then."

"Roger that, sir." I said.

"Atlanta Actual out." The Marshal said.

I kept watching the ghoul as she fed. She finished one body, then began to move onto the next one, but she stopped and looked up at me.

"Um, I have something else I need to mention." The ghoul said. "I have a little sister, and I don't think she could make it one her own. If you don't mind, could we pick her up on the way back to HQ?"

"I'll have to ask the pilot." I said. "But I see no reason why not. I can feed both of you easily enough."

At this stage of the plot, we will take a short diversion to discuss a topic of great interest to me; shock. Not as in electric shock, but shock, in the 'element of surprise' sense.

See, shock is essentially an acute form of surprise, which is a byproduct of the ordered systems of expectations that we, as a necessity, create to govern our lives. When those ordered systems are disrupted, it creates something called a startle response. This is a complex neurological event that, in my word, harkens back to when there were wild animals wandering around that could eat your face at a moment's notice.

Of course, in this world, there are _monsters_ wandering around, and few of them are kind enough to schedule their face-eatings in advance. Therefore, the shock reaction is very much still relevant.

So when I was hugged by one of said face-eating monsters, it was one of the most shocking experiences in my life.

As the ghoul wrapped her arms around me, pressing my arms to my side, I suddenly realized how foolish I had been. There was no way a ghoul would surrender, except as a plot to lure me off guard. She was muttering something over and over, no doubt a mantra of hatred.

"Thank you thank you thank you thank you." She said. "You don't know how much this means to me. I'm Charlotte, by the way. Charlotte Suraebu."

"Um... you're welcome?" I said.


End file.
